An annual study by cybersecurity company Surfshark shows that a total of 310.9 million accounts were breached in 2022, with 1 in 3 breached accounts being of Russian origin.
China took 2nd place with a 45% year-on-year growth, while the US appeared at the No: 3 position with a nearly 9-fold decrease since 2021. India had 4.7 million breached email accounts, improving its position from 3rd to 7th since 2021.
The report found Asia to be the 2nd most affected continent after Europe, with breached users mostly coming from China, Indonesia & India.
Global data from Surfshark’s data breach statistics tool recorded over 310 million breached Internet users in 2022, as opposed to 959 million seen in 2021. The yearly report ranked Russia 1st in the world by leaked accounts (104.8M), followed by China (34M), the US (23.5M), France (20.1M), Indonesia (14.7M), Brazil (8.7M), India (4.7M), Germany (3.6M), Australia (3.4M) & Turkey (3.2M).
The top 5 most-breached countries accounted for nearly two thirds of all leaked accounts in 2022.
“Every second of 2022, 10 Internet users have lost their data. While these numbers remain unsettling, we’re happy to report an immense global decrease of 68% compared to last year. Some countries, including US., India & Brazil, managed to improve their situation significantly, while Indonesia, China & Russia experienced the biggest surges in data breaches year-over-year, ” said Agneska Sablovskaja, Lead Researcher at Surfshark.